Full text of "History And Human Relation"
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MARXIST HISTORY modern bourgeois world—differences which he sees running through the whole structure of the resulting civilisation* What may be true over long periods in the last resort becomes, however, a pitfall for those Marxists who lack the required elasticity, and apply the formula by a kind of rule of thumb to short-term changes and to the detailed happenings of a narrower world. There is a fallacy, furthermore, in any attempt to trace historical change back to some economic cause, or indeed to any other cause, which is presumed to operate " in the last resort". In history things become so entangled with one another, forces and factors so intricately interwoven, that it is difficult to take even the first steps in the delicate work of their unravelling. When I look at the complicated network of history, when I put the microscope at any point in the story and observe the multiplicity of the interactions, I wonder how anybody can dare to say that he can put his finger on a given thread in the tangle and claim it as the " essential" one* It is hazardous to assert that one has reached the last irreducible factor or the truth that lies at the bottom of the well. One could not accept without serious thought any view which seizes upon some particular thing in history and regards it as being on successive occasions the very starting-point of historical change, It is not incon- . ceivable to me, however, that some economic factor or some very tangible material thing should stand as a kind of pivot on which the history of a civilisation turns; and in a general sense the Marxian view of history may give the academic student the healthy reminder that his H.H.R, 81 F